Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/technology/intel-ceo-resigns-consensual-relationship.html <comment><USER2> Relationships among employees are very hard to keep concealed -- especially so when you're in a very exposed position, as a CEO is. At some point, somebody is going to notice something.

If this is the case, then I'm pretty sure that this knowledge had reached the board long before. Rumors spread fast, after all.

That leaves me to wonder as to the timing of this action. Krzanich received a lot of flak over the past months... it's not entirely unthinkable that the board was sitting on this information and only now used it to get rid of Krzanich without making it look like it's one of the other major issues he could technically be blamed with.

<comment><USER3> Of course they were sitting on it. However, I don't understand why didn't they go the usual nice route - Brian, how can we quickly get rid of you when we need to? Is $10M enough to cover any inconveniences? Enjoy your retirement and see you at the golf course!

Game of Thrones Season 80x86?

<comment><USER4> Probably more than 10mm if they don't claw back equity and golden parachutes.

<comment><USER5> I read it as 10nm and thought how appropriate :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Intel is in serious trouble right now.They accidentally gaffed recently and stated that their goal was "to keep AMD from getting more then 10-20% of the server market" while they deal with a whole bunch of engineering and fab problems with their current generation of chips. They are also looking down the barrel of Apple abandoning Intel, and for the first time in two decades, unleashing a true X86 competitor to the marketplace.

All of these are good reasons the board might want him gone.

My only other point is that even on Hacker News, everyone assumes it's a female subordinate (count the "she's" in this thread). Not that I have any inside knowledge, but it tells you something in how this policy is interpreted.

<comment><USER7> > _Intel is in serious trouble right now._

The whole semiconductor industry is in trouble right now, though few seem to feel the weight of the issue.

We are looking at just a couple process nodes at best before we reach the end of the road for silicon lithography. Sure, there will be further tweaks on existing techniques which will squeeze out small improvements in power, performance and density.

But long gone are the days when we saw steady improvements in circuit density _and simultaneously_ speed _and simultaneously_ cost.

When this knowledge finally sinks in with the investment community, it will call into question the valuation of the entire computer industry. We're already seeing that in the desktop space. I could replace my _6-year old_ Intel i7-3770 desktop with 32GB of RAM, but what's out there that's significantly better at a reasonable cost? Well, a used Xeon workstation maybe, but that's about it.

That _should_ be a big red flag to the investment community, but for reasons I don't understand, people don't seem to care yet.

<comment><USER8> I don't disagree with the wider point but

> I could replace my 6-year old Intel i7-3770 desktop with 32GB of RAM, but > what's out there that's significantly better at a reasonable cost?

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 for $200. ~10% faster single core and you get 8C/16T. DDR4 RAM is quite expensive, though.

(closest available benchmarks, 1700 is about 3% slower than 2700) [0]: [https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2111](https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2111) [1]: [https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/551](https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/551)

<comment><USER7> The Ryzen is better, as another commenter pointed out with the passmark scores. Is it better enough for me to actually go out and buy it?

The system the i7-3770 replaced was a 4 year old dual-core, with (IIRC) just 1GB of RAM. The i7 was a dramatic improvement, but I don't feel that the Ryzen would be a dramatic improvement.

And that's the issue. It is not just me being a little unimpressed with current offerings, or me just being cheap. The issue is that there is even a valid discussion about replacing a 6 year old desktop. In the past, in the 1990's and 2000's, it wasn't a question. You had to upgrade because you wanted to run Windows XP decently, for example.

<comment><USER9> do keep in mind though there is the perspective that we're heading back into the 70s phase where the end user owns dumb terminals and connect into semi- centralized servers. The place where performance is going to be killer is in the server space, which clearly amd is starting to get the jump on intel again, and you are (presumably, don't know what you do as a dev) not the target market. Heck, even if you're a hyperscaler, you might not be the target market, since it might be the likes of AWS.

<comment><USER7> Growth in demand for compute will continue to drive sales for the foreseeable future.

In the "old days", there was also demand from upgrades, but we're seeing that tapering off. And _that_ should be a big concern for the investors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It was stupid of him to do. The executive suite of large companies is very Game of Thrones. Why leave a knife around for someone to stab you in the back? Of course people knew. And then they were "shocked!!" to formally find out.

This is a serious thing. What if you knew about the relationship, and the other person was promoted over you?

I worked at a place where 2 colleagues had an open/secret relationship. One was senior but there wasn't a reporting relationship so everyone looked the other way. When the senior exec weighed in on the junior's promotion, he lost all credibility in the organization.

If the CEO does this, they lose the entire organization.

I guess he can always go to Oracle.

<comment><USER10> >> I guess he can always go to Oracle

Why would a CEO of a microprocessor company be accepted at Oracle?

<comment><USER11> Oracle has a reputation for being the place you go after a scandal that precludes you from employment at most tech companies.

Kinda like the Oakland Raiders. Sorry Oakland fans.

<comment><USER12> now it makes sense why the raiders play within sight of where the warriors play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is no way you would fire a CEO you actually wanted in place because they had a consensual relationship with a subordinate _in the past_. Why are US companies always so aggressive about moralising these issues? No one would take issue if he carried a gun at work. Why is it that corporate morals rule?

<comment><USER14> A relationship between a manager and someone they manage compromises the effectiveness of both the manager and the team. As CEO, he is _everyone 's_ boss, so having a consensual relationship with anyone involved in the organisation is a bad thing.

If she got promoted, would it be because of her work, or her relationship with the boss? If she didn't get promoted, would it be because of her attitude, or her relationship with the boss? If she had an argument with a colleague, was it because she was an entitled slut? If he cut the budget of the department she worked in, was it because he was going off her?

It's pernicious and there's nothing you can do about it except simply not sleep with the people you manage.

If a CEO of a blue-chip like Intel doesn't get this basic rule of management, what other basic mistakes is he going to make? Bring a gun into work? ;)

<comment><USER15> You can ask those same questions about any attractive person or any person with powerful family members. Does that mean we can't employ those people either?

Of course not. If a manager runs a tight ship and treats their team fairly, then there shouldn't be anything wrong with a relationship. If as a manager you can't properly separate your emotions and friendships from your management duties, you aren't going to make a good manager anyway. The manager who is going to unfairly promote the person they are seeing is also going to unfairly promote the worker who they are best friends with over the worker who best deserves the promotion.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. There are many successful cases of teachers, where their own kids are sitting in their classes.

According to the CEO logic this should not be allowed and would not work. It does. Are teachers better managers than CEO's? Apparently. But then they should get paid accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm I the only one who finds it appalling that the NY Times mentions #metoo and Harvey Weinstein as if to insinuate his consenting relationship was anything like what Weinstein did.

Honestly, I get why these policies exist, but sometimes it feels heavy handed to fire somebody for having a consenting relationship at work. After all, when you work long and hard hours often times coworkers are the people you get to know best and your inner circle.

<comment><USER18> The problem is that if you are the CEO, you don't have any "coworkers." You are in charge of everyone. No one else there is your peer.

The military has a policy that treats an affair between an officer and the spouse of someone in their unit as non-consensual. It is treated basically like statutory rape. What the spouse says is irrelevant because you can't eliminate the possibility they are basically being blackmailed into claiming it was consenting.

If you have enough direct power over someone, you can't really determine if it was mutually consenting. I think this is a root cause of a lot of the he said/she said stuff where men are all astonished that they are being accused of anything when they felt it was consenting.

In some cases, I have some sympathy for the guy who may well have not really fully understood the intimidation factor in the situation. In other cases, they clearly are happy to use their power to bully others into getting their way and, no, I'm not sympathetic to their bullshit claims.

<comment><USER19> > In some cases, I have some sympathy for the guy who may well have not really > fully understood the intimidation factor in the situation. In other cases, > they clearly are happy to use their power to bully others into getting their > way and, no, I'm not sympathetic to their bullshit claims.

How would a neutral third-party observer legitimately be able to tell the difference (assuming the latter is a sociopath or just a really good actor pretending to be the former)?

To me, that seems to be the real benefit to the strictness of some of these rules. It removes an avenue of the unintended intimidation that you mention.

I do think it helps to discuss it and call out these issues so that people understand that they're not just arbitrary or some kind of over-reaction or extreme bureacracy.

<comment><USER18> I'm not pretending to be judge and jury, just a human being who has opinions when I read or hear about things. Not all situations are as cut and dried as "He was the CEO, she was an underling and there was some rule against it."

Also, I wasn't solely thinking of cases where I am a third party observer.

I'm a woman. I've found myself at times the subject of male interest where there was a power imbalance. Some men are assholes and I have no sympathy for their shit. In other cases, it's more complicated than that.

And I was defending the existence of such rules, so I have no idea why you are criticizing my remark.

<comment><USER19> > And I was defending the existence of such rules, so I have no idea why you > are criticizing my remark.

I wish you had followed the guidelines and taken the most charitable reading of what I said.

I, too, defended the existence of the rules. Not only was I not criticizing your remark, but I was supporting the existence of the remark, as it's a form of discussion that helps raise awareness of the necessity of the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So obviously relationships are bad when there's a power dynamic, and between different management levels is a common subset of this.

However it feels like many people are spending more and more time at work, and it also seems cruel to say: "you cannot get to know anyone romantically during 50-75% of your waking day."

<comment><USER21> The problem wasn't that she was a coworker. It was that she was a subordinate.

Nobody cares if two engineers hook up, but it's a Very Bad Thing if your boss starts putting the moves on you. Relationships where one person holds real- world power over another are prone to exploitation and violation of consent.

<comment><USER22> All relationships at work are a bad idea.

They're dangerous to the firm and bad for the people's involved careers.

Best rule for everyone is no relationships between co-workers and if one happens both people are fired.

<comment><USER23> That is mind-boggingly ridiculous: the concept that a company would have any sort of opinion on who I have sex with.

US work culture sometimes feels so incredibly alien when seen from the outside.

<comment><USER24> It's alien when you're on the inside too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sure, there's a policy, but who cares? People need to quit meddling in the affairs of others.

If a relationship is consensual what's the issue? If we're spending a significant part of our waking hours at work, it should be a baked in assumption that at some point, some coworkers are going to end up in a romantic relationship together. Hell, the majority of my significant romantic relationships started out as consensual workplace flirting.

It should only ever be an issue when that relationship causes trouble for the business.

<comment><USER26> I've seen these relationships cause major problems. Bob had a relationship with Alice, and now couldn't fire her because it would look like quid pro quo (not getting into details here). Alice was the worst manager I have ever worked for, and many of her direct reports were quitting without notice (including me).

Even though what happened between Alice and Bob was consensual, it made it impossible for Bob to do his job. Alice and Bob were both fired.

You can't effectively distinguish between a "good relationship" and a "bad relationship" so a blanket rule makes the most sense. The issue is not necessarily about whether the relationship itself is ethical, but how it appears to observers and if it affects the organization.

<comment><USER27> > Bob had a relationship with Alice, and now couldn't fire her because it > would look like quid pro quo. Alice was the worst manager I have ever worked > for

This seems like a problem caused by relationship policy and optics rather than the relationship itself. Doesn't Bob have a manager that can get involved to explicitly get rid of Alice?

<comment><USER26> > This seems like a problem caused by relationship policy and optics rather > than the relationship itself.

Yes, that's what I mean when I said, "The issue is not necessarily about whether the relationship itself is ethical, but how it appears to observers and if it affects the organization."

If you need to get Bob's manager, Carol, involved to manage Alice when things go poorly, it means that you should have had Carol managing Alice from the beginning. This is the only way I've ever seen it work well. Alice is under Bob in the org chart but all of her performance reviews are done by Carol, and Carol signs Alice's pay sheets, et cetera. I've seen this particular case happen a few times where Alice is Bob's daughter or where Alice and Bob were married before they came to the organization.

This is not possible when Bob is the CEO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Man, Larry Ellison handles stuff like this way better.

[https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Oracle-Boss-In-High- Tech...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Oracle-Boss-In-High-Tech-Soap- Opera-Ellison-2859701.php)

<comment><USER28> He'd get fried today. This article shows exactly why companies have fraternization rules. It is not to protect the employees. It is to protect the executives from extortion, and as such, the rules should punish the subordinates just as much as the managers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So he quits because of a "relationship", but not because of insider trading?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-krzanich-sold- share...](http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-krzanich-sold-shares-after- company-was-informed-of-chip-flaw-2018-1)

<comment><USER30> The optics are unfortunate but that's not what insider trading is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Other article which isn't so sparse on detail (the NYT will probably improve the article linked in the OP later): [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/21/intel- ceo-brian-krzanich-to-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/21/intel-ceo-brian- krzanich-to-step-down-bob-swan-to-step-in-as-interim-ceo.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> At Microsoft, the Chairman and CEO Bill Gates married the project manager for Microsoft Bob and Encarta, Melinda.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob)

<comment><USER33> Microsoft does not and did not have any policy like this.

That said, if the other party gets pissed at the end of the relationship and complains, you are gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Bill Gates got away with it... but then maybe having a lot of ownership in the company protected him. Well that and he married Melinda.

<comment><USER35> At that time, did Microsoft have an anti-fraternization policy?

Did he conceal his relationship with his future wife?

Unsure there is enough information to suggest Bill Gates "got away" with anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Intel had a pretty rough year with discovered exploits, poor PR and serious production issues for their tech.

How to discreetly solve the above issues? Have the CEO resign due to a reason that is not related in any way to his capacity of being a CEO. Put new CEO in the driver's position and have the board tell him where to go.

Usually CEOs have a nice package, even with a resignation, with some stocks and goodies so most likely everyone won in this case.

</comment><comment><USER37> Board clearly wanted him out anyways. Probably because he let AMD catch up so much.

</comment><comment><USER38> A board doesn't fire its CEO because they went on a few dates with someone a while back—even if that's against company policy.

Getting the popcorn out to see how this unfolds...

<comment><USER39> They had so many reasons to push him out. I feel like the board has been aware of the relationship for a while, but they got together one day to figure out which public reason to give for the ousting of Krzanich. And they chose this, which is probably the reason with the least negative impact on whatever is left of Krzanich' career. He may even get high-fives for it at his next gig.

At the end of the day, they had to get rid of him, not just for the insider trading, which is probably one of those "everyone does it" things in corporate America, but primarily because he seemed completely incapable of keeping Intel competitive against AMD's offensive over the next few years. Plus, under Krzanich's watch Intel lost its multi-year leadership in process technology.

<comment><USER40> The easier way for Krzanich was to let him resign because "he wanted to spend more time with his family".

<comment><USER41> Honestly, I'm not entirely clear why people are saying this was him being forced out. Unless a CEO decides to fight the board, it's easy enough to just say "hey, you're done so pick a graceful reason to resign". There are plenty of "time with the family" resignations out there with no need to dig up dirt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So my question is: Was the female employee also fired? If not, why not?

<comment><USER42> Well the obvious literal answer is that the subordinate can't exploit the organizational power dynamic the way someone the CEO can, and misbehavior of a CEO brings bad press and dysfunction to hurt the company in a way that a random employee can't. But I'm sure that isn't relevant. The obvious true answer is that the board wanted to get rid of the CEO, didn't care about the affair, but used it as an excuse.

<comment><USER43> >Well the obvious literal answer is that the subordinate can't exploit the organizational power dynamic the way someone the CEO can

This is absolutely not the case. The dynamic surrounding someone who is sleeping with the CEO will be similar to the dynamic surrounding the CEO's brother. They get what they want, even if they want something dumb that isn't in the company's best interest, with little to no push-back because nobody wants to be on the CEO's bad side.

<comment><USER42> Well that's a very limited and simplistic best case scenario for the subordinate, but you'd really have to go out of your way to fail to see the other obvious possible outcomes that range from problematic to criminal.

<comment><USER28> His reply pointed out a specific abuse of power that negatively affects the company. You failed to do so in your reply.

And seriously, name one possible motivation other than extortion for starting a relationship with a married executive.

And for the married executive, name one possible motivation other than sexual interest for a relationship with a subordinate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm curious why the board used this old infraction as the justification. As if being allowed to use the standard "leaving to spend more time with family" story would be getting off too easy... Or maybe something something vague would arouse more suspicion? I suppose there is value in an acute, yet unrelated to performance story.

</comment><comment><USER45> The Oregonian has a better article than any I've seen posted here so far:

[https://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2018/06/intel_...](https://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2018/06/intel_ceo_brian_krzanich_resig.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> If it's a company rule not to fraternize, punishment should go both ways.

</comment><comment><USER4> At a prior (Fortune 500) company the head of HR got sacked for having sex with his secretary in his office the weekend. (Security walked in on them) Poor judgment.

<comment><USER46> Phil Condit lost his CEO job at Boeing for the same reason. It was a mess -- his wife kicked him out (he was living in a hotel), Boeing fired him, and then his secretary sued him for sexual harassment.

<comment><USER4> It's very strange. Hard to judge because I'm not in their shoes, but if you must cheat, do you have to do it with a subordinate? Is it a power thing?

It looks like another corruption scandal got Condit, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Jesus, why would you throw that kind of power and money away for that...

Regardless of your gender, orientation... whatever... keep it in your pants regarding the workplace!

</comment><comment><USER48> Another, let's say "interesting" CEO resignation. So many in such a short timespan. I wonder why this is happening all of a sudden.

</comment><comment><USER3> So so so stupid... I hope the next gen of managers would completely abstain from any kind of romantic relationships with fellow employees given what is happening now. Their inability to think clearly and exert self-control damages companies way too much, even if they are seduced by persons seeking their own profit or being set-up by their frenemies knowing their weaknesses.

<comment><USER49> Telling people not to form personal relationships among the group that they spend most of their waking life with has a long history of failure.

That doesn't mean not to say it, but don't be surprised when it happens anyway. Sometimes people don't make the "rational" decision, or don't value their job enough to put the workplace's priorities above their own.

<comment><USER3> It's super risky. There is so much power play around, some execs are sex- starved, used by their subordinates or peers that want a promotion or using their subordinates ("or else") etc. Just way too many problems - they should prescribe mandatory self-restraint training or take them twice a year to some party island to steam off. Or form alliances with neighboring companies and encourage dating between them or whatever. Some HR can figure it out surely, so there is at least some benefit for having them instead of just containing damage all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's probably a good rule of thumb for a person in authority to assume anyone under him%her

</comment><comment><USER51> OK: Shipping billions of bug-ridden chips NOT OK: Dipping your pen in the company ink

</comment><comment><USER52> And this has nothing to do with the troubled 10nm process...

</comment><comment><USER53> The other employee has been fired, too?

</comment><comment><USER54> Let the man live!

</comment><comment><USER55> This reminds me if Eric Schmidt left Google because of this debacle: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric- schmidt-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt- google-new-america.html)

</comment><comment><USER56> What is the Intel non-fraternization policy? What romantic relationships are banned?

<comment><USER57> At most companies it basically means that a manager should not have a romantic relationship with anyone in their chain of command. In the case of a CEO this would extend to the entire company.

I know it sounds punitive, but it's really a question of fairness to every other employee working for that manager — nothing improper needs to be done by either party for it to negatively impact the other employees.

It also discourages managers from taking their pick of young staff members, and discourages any lower-level staff who might try to sleep their way to the top.

FWIW, most companies also have a reporting policy where you can report a relationship to HR and request a transfer to another department to avoid violating the policy. But that wouldn't apply to a CEO — people in that position are simply expected to have better judgment than that.

<comment><USER58> It also deters blackmail from other parties, if the relationship is not public.

<comment><USER57> Eh, I would say it invites just as much blackmail as it deters. Those policies add more negative consequences to the relationship being exposed — if there's a chance you could lose your job because of a non-fraternization policy, you'll be _more_ motivated to pay the blackmail and keep everything under wraps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Why is this even worth discussing?

<comment><USER37> Because the worlds most important tech company and the one on which all others are based just fired its CEO.

<comment><USER60> The world's most important tech company? Maybe in the 80s, but that hasn't been true for a long time. Intel has nothing unique anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Interesting though experiment: Let S be the set of all humans. Remove any human from S who had at least one pair of ancestors (no matter how far in the past) that had a boss/subordinate relationship that is now deemed 'inappropriate' in large western countries. How many humans would be left in S?

Conjecture: Zero.

Does that say anything interesting about humans?

<comment><USER62> Interesting though experiment: Let S be the set of all humans. Remove any human from S who had at least one pair of ancestors (no matter how far in the past) that had an abusive relationship that is now deemed 'inappropriate' in large western countries. How many humans would be left in S?

Conjecture: Zero.

Does that say anything interesting about humans?

<comment><USER61> This is a very good reply, and it can be used to refine the analysis, and bring out the difference between both:

\- abusive relationship was typically considered problematic by at least one participant even at the time.

\- Boss / subordinate relationship was typically _not_ considered problematic by both participants at the time.

Classic examples doctor/nurse, pilot/stewardess, professor/PhD student, lawyer/secretary. I could introduce you to several such couplings among my acquintances, and relatives.

<comment><USER63> I mean, I get what you're saying but there have been plenty of people in relationships that would be criminally abusive who didn't have a problem with the relationship.

Just because someone thought the situation was fine doesn't mean that it was good for society, and unless we become a libertarian paradise those questions are going to be asked when the situation has the heuristics that point to there being a problem

<comment><USER28> I think the point is that it limits the motivations for somebody to seek a position of power. Hopefully to ones that are good for the company.

It's hard to find a trustworthy executive. That's probably the #1 trait for effectiveness. Not saying that we do a good job of finding them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dropshipping Marketplace: YouDroop - <AUTHOR> https://www.youdroop.com <comment><USER2> Man.

Man, Man & Man pointing at random thing, woman looking at thing.

Man.

Old Man.

Their branding tells me I need to be a successful (business)man to use this service. It amazes me that this is still a problem, how branding like this will hurt a businesses. I think diversity is key.</comment>


Not build your startup as SPA - <AUTHOR> https://www.amberbit.com/blog/2017/9/20/why-you-should-not-build-your-startup-as-spa/ <comment><USER2> This used to be a super common narrative/ theme for articles, but they seem to have gone out of fashion.

There's nothing inherently wrong with choosing to use a monolith approach or attempting to build your startup around a SPA- there are trade-offs with each approach and each provides opportunities to the developers working on the software. Someone architecting their system should be concerned with using tools that fit their use case, and their business model.

SPAs have many advantages such as not having to have your user experience dictated by page refreshes, but disadvantages such as missing out on boilerplate generated for you. Neither is makes a SPA approach good or bad... just different.

I just wish that articles like this would do 2 things better:

1)Accept the nuance of decisions when building anything. This article might as well be arguing for using nails over screws when building your shed.

2) Provide some evidence/ ANY evidence, even if it is anecdotal. "When I built XZY application we found testing our apps took 1 day longer per 3 days spent writing code, than it did when we built a similar app as a monolith." or I reviewed 200 repos and found the time between when an app was created and when it was released was XYZ days longer when building a SPA.

Without evidence you are just blowing hot air.</comment>


What's Functional Programming All About? - <AUTHOR> http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/WhatsFunctionalProgrammingAllAbout.html <comment><USER2> As a newbie in the software engineering world (college senior), I thought this was a really interesting explanation of FP.

I wonder if there is software that takes a program as an input and outputs a 2D block diagram of that program similar to the figures in the blog post.</comment>


Google releases free, detailed, HTML/CSS/Javascript encyclopedia by Mark Pilgrim - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/doctype/

<comment><USER3> Holy cow! Google also released their cross-platform Javascript library that they used for GMail and other projects.

<http://code.google.com/p/doctype/source/browse>

Awesome.

<comment><USER4> I haven't seen anything that says that's the library they use for Gmail - <USER2> got the impression it was a brand new library produced as part of the Doctype project (partly for educational purposes). Got a link to back that statement up?

<comment><USER3> Sure, it's in the video interview with Mark Pilgrim

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmUiKaHWjLI>

At 5:28 Mark says:

"This is a big part of the encyclopedia and the guide. It is not just having a reference section but having a series of how-to articles and larger case studies. And those articles are primarily based around previously unreleased Google code that we are open sourcing as part of this project. We have a JavaScript library that handles a lot of cross browser compatibility issues which we use in properties like Gmail. If you ever viewed source you've seen the compiled version which isn't terrible readable. As part of this encyclopedia project, we are releasing the original uncompiled version that has the actual comments and real function names and description of things. So that is all open sourced under a OSI approved license."

This is so unbelievably cool, why aren't Google or other blogs playing this up more??

<comment><USER5> Because there are so many other free Javascript libraries out there?

<comment><USER3> Sure, but the JS library that powers GMail should at least get a mention and not be buried 6 minutes into a video interview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You've got to appreciate a company that constantly produces free services that don't particularly generate revenue. I think the best way to describe this is a wiki for everything html/css/javascript ... Hope it grows and gets embraced

<comment><USER5> Please, don't take that as altruism.

If Google wants to have the web as the dominant platform, it makes absolute sense to lower as much as possible the barriers of entry to produce Web Applications.

It is just like Joel Spolsky said: they are just taking things that are complementary to their revenue-generating offerings and turning into a commodity. Google releasing something like this is no different than having IBM working on Eclipse.

<comment><USER7> Barriers to entry seem to be very important on the web.

Some believe building walled gardens is better (ebay, facebook´s social graph). Others believe opening the platform is the way to go (free software). While some others take a mixed approach (google, microsoft, amazon). Time will tell, but it seems it´s tilting towards openness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> W3C has had something like this (but not as clean or easy to navigate) for some time now at: <http://www.w3schools.com>. I don't the W3C version is editable by others.

However, it's still good to see another place we can look for answers if one place doesn't answer it well enough.

<comment><USER9> Those aren't actually done by the W3C; and I've heard there are a lot of errors in them. However, I've used them in the past with no complaints for a quick lookup -- learned XPath from there, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's most interesting to me about this is the dependency management code in their javascript library. That's a feature that truly sets it apart from the other mainstream javascript libraries. (I'd love to be corrected on this!)

<comment><USER4> That feature has been in Dojo for years - in fact I'd be very surprised if Google's implementation wasn't directly inspired by Dojo's.

<comment><USER10> it does look a lot like dojo, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what the folks over at Sitepoint think about this, having just recently put up a complete CSS reference and working on one for HTML.

<comment><USER12> Right now I'd be far more inclined to still use SitePoint's, as their reference appears to be much more through, including extensive commentary on cross-browser differences. See

<http://reference.sitepoint.com/css/background> <http://code.google.com/docreader/#p>(doctype)s(doctype)t(BackgroundCSSProperty)

This isn't to say that Google's documentation project won't get better, as it is an open project; but right now it's borderline useless IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The DHTML bible still rules</comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with bigger competitors? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I'm facing a huge dilemma and I would get used for some advice.
With a friend, we start developing an app for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gyms in which the core features are the management of the classes, the attendance as well as the subscriptions and the payments, plus other features related to the sport itself.
This starts as a pet project which was an excuse to keep in touch, experiment with new technologies and most importantly have fun.  Now we are evolving it into a business idea that we would like to pursue with a bit more focus and care to be able to eventually make some money out of it.
Everything started based on these promises so we didn't do any research beforehand, especially in understanding the market and the competitors. Huge mistake.
We already have a pilot gym that is using it successfully, and we are about moving to the next step and adding a new gym to the network, in doing so we start doing some research and we spot a very big competitor that have already implemented all the features that are also in our roadmap and I'm not afraid to say that we panic a little bit.
What we should do now? Is this project just not worth the effort anymore? How do you approach such an issue? <comment><USER2> _This starts as a pet project which was an excuse to keep in touch, experiment with new technologies and most importantly have fun._

Given that, it sounds like you've already won, no matter what happens next.

As far as advice goes, I'll just leave a couple of book recommendations.

[https://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Market-Leaders- Customers-D...](https://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Market-Leaders-Customers- Dominate/dp/0201407191)

[https://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer- Com...](https://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer- Competition/dp/0470223391/)

[https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al- Ries/dp/00...](https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al- Ries/dp/0071373586)

[https://www.amazon.com/Its-that-Small-Fast- Slow/dp/006662053...](https://www.amazon.com/Its-that-Small-Fast- Slow/dp/0066620538/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for that!

Very refreshing and insightful answer :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> First, what is that pilot gym paying you, and what does the competition charge? If this is a freemium play, research the percentage of apps that make money. It's currently basically none.

In the heyday, a lot of people made money in apps, but that's just a rumour echoing through time now, and is no longer reality in the present day.

Second, your mistake was not conducting market and competitor research first. You wanted to jump in and start coding. Business doesn't work like that. Construction is the very last step, not the first step.

Third, yes it's unlikely to be worth continuing, due to the winner take all nature of networks (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, vs who?). The only antidote is to pivot to a space that that big (and therefore well funded) competitor isn't targeting.

</comment><comment><USER4> You may be able to compete based on factors other than current feature set, including but not limited to customer service / support and usability/user experience.</comment>


Comcast blocked my site. How do I fix this? - <AUTHOR> I have an invoicing app that's been online since 2002 and Comcast decided to block it a couple weeks ago. I have no idea why.
I have no reason to suspect anyone has been using it to spam, and I've had no complaints at all about that.
I've tried contacting them but their tech support team tells me since I'm not a customer of theirs they cannot help me. They confirmed it is blocked though, but could not tell me why. One of them suggested I message them on Facebook, so I did.
On Facebook I gave them contact info for several of my app's (they asked and the users gave me permission to do that), and they said they'd contact them, but they haven't.
I've asked users who've complained to me to contact Comcast and several have. Those who have spoke with them tell me that Comcast's tech support said they'd send the complaint up to there "Advanced Tech Support Team", but nothing has changed so they keep calling me.
If there were a user spamming with my app I'd obviously deal with that, but I just don't see that happening. Even the users that have been there for 15 years haven't made even 10,000 invoices so I don't see how any of them could be flagged as spammers.
I do know that having the word "Invoice" in the subject can set a spam flag off and send the email to a users "Junk" folder, but that's not what's happening.
Anyone have any ideas on how to deal with this? <comment><USER2> Were you running this out of your home? Because that is against their terms.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's a DigitalOcean VPS.</comment></comment>


Ask YC:  If someone releases something as public domain, how can you trust him/her? - <AUTHOR>

I'm especially suspicious of something like a public domain scrabble word list.  This takes enormous effort to put together.  If you are told that it's public domain, then how do you know that this is true and that it would be safe to use it in your code for commercial purposes?<p>I'm interested in using this word list from http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrendel/software.html:<p>"Updated millennial edition of ENABLE (ENABLE2K): The Enhanced North American Benchmark LEexicon package provides a 173,000+ word standardized tournament-level master list, more carefully researched than "official" and proprietary lists. It is not restricted to words of an arbitrary length and it features all "official" updates. The ENABLE list has been placed in the Public Domain and is both free and freely distributable. This is the list used by the WORDY word study system, above, and by various online Scrabble® servers and software developers (at least two commercial word games use it as its dictionary). It is highly recommended that the (updated) ENABLE SUPPLEMENT [785K], and the ABLE SUPPLEMENT [559K], additional lists and documentation packages for ENABLE be obtained. Freeware." <comment> a-priori What sort of trust do you mean?

Do you mean trust in the quality of the product? You need to decide that for yourself, just like always.

Do you mean trust that the author won't be a jerk in the future and try to stop you from using it? They can't: they've released it into the public domain. They can decide later to release a new version under a new license or stop distributing it, but they can't stop you from using that version once you've obtained it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean maybe the author(s) copied part of the work from something that is not public domain and then claimed wrongly that the result is public domain.

In my case, having to change the word list later because it turns out that part of it was copied from a proprietary source would mess up my puzzle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> If someone releases something under the BSD license, how do can you trust him/her? I'm especially suspicious of something like an operating system with its attendant functionality, such as the TCP/IP stack. This takes enormous effort to put together. If you are told that it's under the BSD license, then how do you know that this is true and that it would be safe to use it in your code for commercial purposes?

<comment><AUTHOR> You haven't answered my question.

<comment><USER3> I think he has, but to paraphrase:

The amount of work put into making the initial copy of something has no bearing on the license. Some people don't care about the amount of work something took, after the fact. The current rights-holder may not have actually done the work. The current rights-holder may have political beliefs that conflict with copyright.

Anyway, if you're asking whether you should trust a third party about the license for something, the answer is no. However, you seem to be asking whether you should trust the rights-holder about the license they themselves used, which just seems odd.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean maybe the author(s) copied part of the work from something that is not public domain and then claimed wrongly that the result is public domain.

In my case, having to change the word list later because it turns out that part of it was copied from a proprietary source would mess up my puzzle.

<comment><USER2> What if you use BSD-licensed code, only it later turns out that the person who added the license wasn't the copyright holder? What if you ask someone if you can have something, and he says yes, but later it turns out it wasn't his to give away?

The license is irrelevant; you are worried about people claiming something is under X terms, when it's not. The answer to this is: do your legal due diligence like everyone else.

(The only wrinkle is that in some jurisdictions it's not legally possible to put something into the public domain. This does not seem to bother most people.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would be the perfect solution for Universal Basic Income (UBI)? - <AUTHOR> Following up on this post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259
I have gone through more than 500 comments and saw a lot of suggestions how UBI can work. A lot of people assume that this is the example how it can work:
Every person will get something like $40.000 yearly as UBI + the salary they earn. But, the biggest challenge is what happens with renting and education prices and if it will go up then.
I was thinking and summarizing that something like this can be a solution:
Every family gets a house (there are well prefabricated houses for less than $40.000) in the first year (something like an Universal Basic House) and then everybody gets something like $40.000 per year.
I would like to hear your opinions and suggestions as it is not so easy to go through 1800 comments and analyze everything.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> My idea: Every family (couple+one or more kids) that does not own a home is able to live in a public house that has a robotized vertical farming aquaponic system designed to feed a family of five, what they do with any surplus is up to them. Singles/couples share houses. No money.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea :)</comment></comment>


File Systems – ZFS vs. XFS - <AUTHOR> https://linuxhint.com/zfs_vs_xfs/ <comment><USER2> > One last point of architectural difference is this — XFS has B+ tree > implementation for searching files and allocating space. This makes > searching and fetching the data much faster. OpenZFS has no such feature.

I wish I could downvote this article, just for this one point alone. I wonder what kind of benchmarking the author did to come to the conclusion of "searching and fetching the data much faster" and how much the B+ tree of xfs contributed to it. Speed depends on a lot of factors (copy on write, compression, journaling, crash recovery, etc.) and I wonder how the author narrowed it down to the B+ tree of XFS. Also, there could be variants of various B family trees even within a same filesystem. So I am not really sure, what the author means by "XFS has B+ tree implementation".

If you are a RedHat shop and deploy linux extensively already, then xfs may be a better option, if you are not looking for most zfs features like volume management, etc. Also, installation, support etc. would be much easier.

This article is shallow in many ways technically, but arrives at conclusions strongly. It just seems like a paid article to promote zfs.

May be an article on LWN would be more meaningful and technically competent to make a comparison than this.

<comment><USER3> It looks to me like this was an attempt to make XFS look better? The author probably looks at the things from "the reliability is #1, and the rest is secondary" standpoint, so they are having a hard time coming with pro-XFS arguments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was expecting some more technical proof, benchmarks or similar. Sadly, this post reads as a pure advertisement piece to use OpenZFS.

What should i take away in this sentence? "XFS is optimized for huge files and for parallel I/O this makes it the easier choice for use cases like NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division." The whole post sounds like "ZFS is the superior technology with much more bells and whistles and XFS is old tech but XFS is what you choose if you're the NASA..".

Having interest in XFS/ZFS/BTRFS and what to choose on my machines, i was hoping for some more substantial and objective facts.

<comment><AUTHOR> It might not what exactly you are looking for, but i think it's close.

MySQL performance bench suite against ZFS vs XFS

[https://www.percona.com/blog/2018/05/15/about-zfs- performanc...](https://www.percona.com/blog/2018/05/15/about-zfs-performance/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't really know that this is a particularly appropriate comparison. XFS is a fine filesystem, but ZFS is more than a filesystem, it's RAID, LVM, deduplication, etc. The real competitors to ZFS from my understanding are largely BTRFS and proprietary technologies such as apple's new APFS. I'd very much like to see a comparison between those. I've run ZFS on my systems for years, but moved away from it towards btrfs on my laptop, as it was just too much pain to keep the kernel modules up to date. I wish the CDDL were compatible with the GPL, cause if the drivers were in-tree there wouldn't be any argument at all.

<comment><USER6> With Ubuntu you get binary modules updated together with the kernel.

I moved the opposite direction (btrfs->zfs) because I had issues with my main btrfs rootfs constantly degrading to read-only mode, causing my system to crash and require rebooting.

With ZFS I've had no such issues. ZFS uses noticeably much more RAM though.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I was on Gentoo at the time, which didn't make it particularly difficult (when everything is source code it doesn't really matter), but I'm on Fedora now, where the story is a bit different. Ubuntu shipping the binary modules is good. Do they support booting from ZFS simply (that is, are the kernel modules in the initramfs)?

<comment><USER6> Yeah. All my systems are pure ZFS systems.

The initial install is a bit involved (live-cd, manual partitioning + debootstrap) but everything just works (tm) after that, including booting into specific snapshots from grub.

There's a good guide on github:

[https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-18.04-Root- on-...](https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-18.04-Root-on-ZFS)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > XFS is largely supported on Linux along with IRIX

Use of the present tense regarding IRIX here made me chuckle. The last version of IRIX is 6.5.30, released in August 2006.

<comment><USER8> And by that point, there wasn't much going on in Irix development. 6.5 was out in the late 1990s, IIRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is mildly ironic to me: I use XFS for my boot file system, a small 16GB in an mdraid mirror, to boot my ZFS server.

They are both useful, and the ultimate solution, for different cases. BTRFS has no future, and ext4 is purely a legacy solution (also ironic, given XFS is older than ext4).

<comment><USER10> Btrfs is actively developed, and stable for the cases indicated in [https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Status](https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Status) .

The mailing list gives interesting insights on what the developers are working on.

<comment><USER11> Seems actively developed indeed: [1]. The current contributors are Facebook, Fujitsu, SUSE, and Oracle.

Its XFS which never had a future because it lacks features which modern filesystems have. Adding these features would be akin to making a new filesystem (which could contain the acronym XFS).

The only real (integrity) issue BTRFS currently has is write hole in RAID5/6\. Its a long standing issue...

[1] [https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Contributors](https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Contributors)

<comment><USER12> It's not true that this is the only issue unfortunately. As much as I want btrfs to succeed, I've seen it disappear completely from my drives and it does have quite a few crashing bugs: [https://bugzilla.kernel.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_s...](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&component=btrfs)

I want it to be stable and safe already, but realistically, we still need to wait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Should a fair comparison not include the features of LVM etc that Red Hat etc are layering together with XFS?

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't know about ZFS but you can't shrink XFS filesystems (opposed to Ext3/4). It may not be the most common use case but I tend to forget about it, used XFS as the fs and then got into problems because of that non-feature.

[http://xfs.org/index.php/Shrinking_Support](http://xfs.org/index.php/Shrinking_Support)

</comment><comment><USER15> On the topic of ZFS on Linux, does anyone know the expected timeline for version 8 of ZoL? Or is it just a case of "it will be ready when it's ready"?

I've had to import an pool from FreeBSD but can only mount the volume as readonly because of a feature flag enabled that isn't in v7 but is currently in the RC versions of 8. I'm a little nervous about running the RC versions because this is a "production" pool (albeit just a home server).

</comment><comment><USER16> I/O on ZFS might be faster if you turn on compression at the expense of memory and cpu. XFS has no such feature, BTRFS has though.

</comment><comment><USER17> "For the sake of clarity, when we say ZFS we mean OpenZFS and not the commercial version supported by Oracle Inc."

Just curious: what are the differences between [Oracle] ZFS and OpenZFS?

<comment><USER18> At this point, the list is very long. Development forked many years ago when Oracle closed the source. Both sides have been in very active development since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Doesn't ZFS consume more resources?

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow, I thought XFS was dead but apparently it is still supported.

<comment><USER13> It is the FS for Red Hat 7 and CentOS 7.

<comment><USER21> Also on RHEL 8.

XFS gains the XFS Copy-On-Write Data Extents feature in RHEL 8 which can speed things up and save space.</comment></comment></comment>


Virgin launches glass-bottomed plane - <AUTHOR> http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/virgin-launches-glass-bottomed-plane <comment><USER2> Isn't this post from the 1st of April?

<comment><USER3> Yes, this was confirmed as an April Fools' day joke.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I hadn't seen it before, and my quick scan of it for joke-signifiers (date near April 1, funny names, strange references) didn't set off my alarms.

Only the engineering (and regulatory) challenge of a glass-bottomed plane seemed strange – and I was hoping for educated commentary here, because with Virgin/Branson, who knows?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can just imagine this will spawn a new contrived, perverted sex act that's similar to the glass-bottomed boat.</comment>


Show HN: Titanicdeath.com, would you have survived the titanic? - <AUTHOR> http://titanicdeath.com/ <comment><USER2> I think we broke it.

<comment><AUTHOR> i did post it in a few places...</comment></comment>


Six Thinking Hats - <AUTHOR> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SixThinkingHats

<comment><USER2> We've tried this at work one time during one of our iteration retrospectives. It took a while for the meeting organizer to explain how it worked, and took a while for people to adjust to it. The consensus at the next meeting was to just go back to "What worked", "What didn't", and "Action items". It was simple, easy to understand, and captured the points we wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER3> I took a course with Edward de Bono himself teaching it in the nineties. He sat with an overhead projector next to him and kept sketching all these little nice diagrams. It can help you classify the various effects of a decision. On the creative side some techniques worked for me like introducing random words and so on.</comment>


DoString – String Manipulation Tool - <AUTHOR> https://dostring.com DoString is the best String Manipulation Tool which can save you from hours of unnecessary manual effort. This website features a helpful collection of free online tools for web coding, text conversion, generation and formatters. We have designed this website to save you time making web pages or preparing content for web publishing projects or other exciting stuffs. https://dostring.com <comment><USER2> Is there an API?</comment>


Show HN: Pgsh – branch Postgres like Git - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sastraxi/pgsh <comment><USER2> This looks really handy. Quite frequently I want to iterate on a migration without having to write the "down" migration until the "up" migration is done. This will save a lot of DB dropping and re-seeding.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a note for anyone trying to download this -- please first try `email@example.com`. The `.2` bugfix release caused a regression that I'm working through now. Thanks :)

<comment><AUTHOR> 0.10.6 is released with a fix :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kinda like aquameta[0]?

[0] [https://github.com/aquametalabs/aquameta](https://github.com/aquametalabs/aquameta)

<comment><USER4> Nothing like aquameta, but I guess the title could apply to both...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I installed this, just to see:

"added 242 packages from 179 contributors and audited 1098 packages in 13.598s"

how can I trust that this doesn't contain malicious code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Such is life in the npm world, unfortunately.

I've tried to be minimal with my dependencies while providing a rich user experience, but I'm sure we could do better still. Any dependencies in particular you'd like me to look into removing?

<comment><USER6> > Such is life in the npm world, unfortunately.

I don't really think npm is to blame in this specific case. It's merely acting as an index to a set of tarballs, e.g. the same way PyPI or crates.io do.

It would be fairer to point the blame at the ecosystem and mindset of developers of popular JavaScript libraries.

<comment><USER7> I've recently been taking my time evaluating dependencies for a few small node projects, and I've actually found I've been impressed at how few dependencies are used by a subset of the Javascript package ecosystem.

I find, anecdotally, that rather than the broad spectrum you might expect, packages tend to either have a huge number of dependencies, or very few. Meaning if you do want to slim down your project's dependencies, it's usually simply a matter of identifying the whales and substituting/eliminating them with something saner.

Take for example two of the most popular package bundlers:

\- parcel: direct dependencies: 59, total dependencies: 1575

\- rollup: direct dependencies: 3, total dependencies: 9

<comment><USER8> It's actually not that straightforward. A library could bundle their dependencies as part of their own build step/publish. They would appear to have zero/less dependencies, but really they just bundled them.

<comment><USER7> Possible but I haven't seen a library that does this. Seems like a very unusual way to do things.

Something to worry about if it ever became prevalent I guess, but doesn't seem to be rn.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The CEO of Reddit Is Also on Trial – On Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/02/27/the-ceo-of-reddit-is-also-on-trial-on-reddit/

<comment><USER2> Are we to expect less from the Reddit community?</comment>


What ever happened to Apple's Ping?  - <AUTHOR>

Anyone using it still? <comment><USER2> Did anyone ever?</comment>


Remembering the Iran-Iraq War - <AUTHOR> https://notevenpast.org/remembering-the-iran-iraq-war/ <comment><USER2> What's effaced from history is how closely the US supported Hussein's Iraq throughout the 80's, right up to the invasion in 1991. The US removed Saddam from the official terrorists lists, sold him advanced weaponry and weapon producing capabilities, including chemical weapons, and nuclear capabilities, at a time when he committed his most egregious crimes, including the gassing of the Kurds. Just before he invaded Kuwait Saddam was even visited by a high level us delegation led by Bob Dole.

[https://chomsky.info/20020901/](https://chomsky.info/20020901/)

<comment><USER3> What's even more unbelive is that the US is allies with Germany and Japan after WWII, and relations with Cuba reversed after they allied themselves with the USSR.

It's almost like nothing in international affairs is static, things change, and things being one way in one decade and another in a different decade doesn't mean anything or anyone is "wrong."

<comment><USER4> None of those are really comparable. Nice try though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is such an obvious example of the divide to conquer strategy which is still alive and well in the region. Iran Contra revealed the MIC was selling weapons to both Iran and Iraq at the same time.

Profit from endless weapons sales, profit from cheap oil, and keep the dollar strong by only selling the oil for the dollar. 3 birds with one stone.

[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro)

And now here we are, oil is cheaper than it has been since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the dollar is more valuable than it has been in decades (relative to other currencies) all the while the instability in the middle east continues to increase.

[http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history- char...](http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart)

"The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous."

<comment><USER6> basically every argument you make is cherry picked. the dollar was near multi- decade lows ~2 years ago. oil was at near multi-decade highs ~2 years ago.

the only thing consistent in anything you said was mid-east instability. the mid-east has been unmanageable / unstable for several eons.

<comment><USER7> And why do you think that is? Could it be the arbitrary borders drawn by the colonial powers? Or perhaps the carefully chosen dictators placed by some great power or other? I hate it when people make the instability in the Middle East seem like its entirely our (i.e. people of the Middle East) fault.

<comment><USER6> i haven't presented anything remotely resembling an argument of causality for mid-east dysfunction, nor do i want to. what i'd like is for people with political axes to grind to back their arguments with facts instead of imagined nonsense.

<comment><USER7> Of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does any discussion around the Middle East produce incredibly shallow, edgy comments?

It's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly complicated stuff, and the discourse is all soundbites.

<comment><USER2> Read Noam Chomsky, a lot of the facts aren't made public, particularly the huge US neocolonial interest in the region, spanning back a century.

<comment><USER8> Noam Chomsky doesn't have the answer. You'd need a PhD on the subject of a single conflict in order to talk about it with authority. He does not have that, though he is a gifted linguist.

You're talking about conflicts that legitimately have roots to the beginning of human history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's see if history repeats itself. The "West" armed and supported Saddam Hussein's brutal regime and he went to war with Iran. Today, the West is arming the brutal regime of the Saudis and they just bombed Iran's embassy in Yemen, things are heating up.

<comment><USER7> Direct conflict is unlikely. Both sides are content with the proxy wars being waged in Yemen and Syria. Why involve your own army when you can pay some other country to do it? Besides, Saudia has a large Shia community, and Iran has a sizeable Sunni community, and I believe both countries are engaged in trade.

<comment><USER10> I hope you're right - but note that Russia and NATO are already too close for comfort in Syria. There's a limit to the number of fighter jets that can be accidentially (or intentionally) shot down before escalation becomes almost inevitable.

It's not inconceivable that we'll see NATO special forces casualities in Russian air raids (or vice-versa).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only way to stabilise middle east is to stop selling arms, I'm not a fan of conspiracy theory but there are parties benefiting from heating up shite and sunni confrontation, Not Middle eastern people definitely.

I believe these two group can live in peace together if dictator regimes fueld by arms companies let them to do so. Its all about propaganda , Heating up emotion and selling more arms.

\- Iranian.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think the fact that two armies fought a war across contrived borders makes them any less contrived.</comment>


Security PSA: "Hidden" Content Is Readable in Shared, Readonly Google Sheets - <AUTHOR> https://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2019/01/27/why-security-expectations-matter-google-sheets-hidden-content/ <comment><USER2> Um, isn't this how other spreadsheet applications work, by visually hiding -- _but not securing_ \-- 'hidden columns/sheets'?

<comment><USER3> Read the post, it covers this.

<comment><USER2> I did read the post, and it construes the ability to hide things with 'security'. This is the first time I've heard this expectation that hiding == security, and I say this as a former project manager for ~4 yrs where I and my colleagues lived in spreadsheets. If you want to secure things, you demand credentials and/or encryption. Visually 'hiding' things in a document UI does nothing, it's trivial to parse out the 'hidden' information from the file itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Expected this to be about hiding content in Google Docs.

I know of some pirate streaming sites using Google Spreadsheet(!) to store encrypted video chunks. JS player pretends to grab data from google docs, decrypts and throws into decoder - user experience doesnt differ from using any other html5 video player while pirates get free, fast and unlimited storage.

<comment><USER5> There is a near unlimited number of places on the internet to store small chunks of data like this.

You could even split them across millions of pastebin pastes.

It's only CORS headers stopping many of them being useful, but a Chrome extension or pirate app can easily ignore such things.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has any questions, please let me know.</comment>


Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3254239/Russia-Hacking-report.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> .gov source: [https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf](https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf)

$ cmp ICA_2017_01.pdf Russia-Hacking-report.pdf; echo $? 0</comment>


Exoscale is saying no to DDOS extortion attempt. Attack expected on Monday. - <AUTHOR> http://mailchi.mp/exoscale/ddos-attack-underway <comment><AUTHOR> As a customer I am glad that someone has the balls so say no to these extortionists and even if I have to deal with down time, it is the right thing to do.</comment>


Show HN: Extract a unique CSS selector for any element on any page - <AUTHOR> https://flutter.social/bookmarklet <comment><USER2> At first glance, I thought this was going to be like Selector Gadget ([http://selectorgadget.com/](http://selectorgadget.com/)), a tool I've used for years to get CSS selectors for elements on pages. But it gives you a _unique_ selector for the unique element you click, which adds a different angle.

I've got to admit, I'm not sure I'd use this over SG since SG can nail down to a single element if you use it the right way, but it's great to see more tools of this nature, as it can really help when doing ad-hoc scraping.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use Selector Gadget too and I was recommending users of Flutter use it to get selectors. However, I'm trying to make the process of getting a unique selector for any element so simple it won't put anyone off. This bookmarklet avoids the need to deselect things and once an element is selected it's just a case of CMD/CTRL + C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it - I do this in Chrome tools > magnifying glass > right click > Copy CSS path. What does it solve this ?

<comment><AUTHOR> The purpose of this bookmarklet is to provide a streamlined method of getting the selector without having to go into the source or use chrome tools.

There is also the problem of using ids. For example in Flutter I may want to auto tweet out the top post in a list of posts on a blog. If the posts have individual ids, and the CSS selector includes them, every time Flutter tries to scrape new content it will get the same post. I want the unique selector for the page element. i.e. the first post in the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Super cool. I can really use this for DuckieTV's custom search engine definition form i'm working on!

[http://i.imgur.com/lT7hUTj.png](http://i.imgur.com/lT7hUTj.png)

</comment><comment><USER5> Just tested it. I can't leave the Flutter Selector once I open it. Clicking OK or Cancel keeps it. I've tried ESC as well but the selector is still present until I reload the page

<comment><AUTHOR> There should be a red 'Close' button in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. I'll add the option to use ESC as well.

<comment><USER6> I have one (red close button). Flutter on first use seems like a faster workflow than the normal, right click, inspect element, look at the chrome elements, find the tag. Great Job!</comment></comment></comment>


Sorry, you cannot buy happiness with a $75,000 salary - <AUTHOR> http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2010/09/10/sorry-you-cannot-buy-happiness-with-a-75000-salary/

<comment><USER2> That's a good analysis. It looks like the stress of day-to-day life is most manageable at or above $75,000, but overall quality-of-life perception continues to grow forever.

That's a reasonable conclusion. Intuitively, I would be more stressed by an unusually large gas bill, say, if I earned $30,000/year than I would be if I made $75,000/year. And at the same time, I would always be happier (feel cooler, more productive, more generous) if I had a bigger house, faster boat, or could give more to charity.

</comment><comment><USER3> You cannot buy happiness at all. However, that isn't what they meant to say. They're trying to say that more money always means greater chance of happiness because of less stress.

As the original article stated, there's a point where more money means new stresses appear. The results of their study show that at $75k, the total of all stresses is at its least on average.

That number is wrong. These kind of studies always are due to their nature. It's a best-guess.

The point wasn't to figure out how much money people should be making, it was just a look into how money affects peoples' lives for the average person.

</comment><comment><USER4> The point is if you think that being a billionaire will make you happy, it won't. So focus on making enough money to be comfortable and work on figuring out what actually makes you happy. Money is so rewarding a drug it drowns out everything else. This type of research helps remind people to kick the money habit.</comment>


Show HN: Developer Who – A Three.js Tribute to Doctor Who - <AUTHOR> http://developerwho.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I made this just for fun. I thought I'd post it since the new season of Doctor Who is upon us.</comment>


Pin-protected USB 2FA token with self-destruct and plausible deniability - <AUTHOR> http://crp.to/ok <comment><AUTHOR> Kickstarter goal reached in 2.5 days! I know, "only" $10K. This thing has merit AND cool open source tech.</comment>


Show HN: Datafiniti.net - We created the Google of Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.datafiniti.net/

<comment><USER2> Happy to discuss any questions the HN community has about our site!</comment>


Cocteau – A Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/book-review-cocteau-a-life/ <comment><USER2> There is a documentary about Marcel Proust that features long interviews of Cocteau, who knew him well. He seems amazed that Proust's fame grew so much bigger than his, and prudently but unmistakably talks down Proust's achievements and talents. It leaves a general impression of pettiness. He passes for an elegant man but I'm not sure he was one.

</comment><comment><USER3> nice book</comment>


Card.io - fast and easy mobile credit card scanning - <AUTHOR> https://www.card.io/ <comment><USER3> (Full disclosure, I'm a stock holder in Square)

There are two good reasons Square doesn't do this that I can think of off the top of my head.

First, CNP vs CP card processing rates. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_not_present_transaction>

Every credit card has the CC number encoded in to the back of the card, but in addition to that, it has a couple bytes of extra information. That extra information qualifies the merchant for a lower processing rate if they SWIPE the card. That means, when you take a picture, you are paying closer to 3.5% instead of 2.75% for every transaction. (rates quoted are square's cp vs cnp rates)

Some merchants are extremely sensitive to this, other aren't. The larger a merchant is, the more likely they are going to care. On the other hand, no merchant wants to lose a sale, 3.5% of a sale is still better than 100% of a lost sale.

The other reason is based on UX. It feels really weird to have someone take a picture of your credit card using their cell phone. The apps that use this technology might be doing anything with that image.

Otoh, more people should take credit cards!

(edit: Sidenote, Square considered doing this before the swiper was invented, during the very first month or so. Doesn't mean it is a bad idea, just that Square moved away from it in favor of a swiper.)

<comment><USER4> _Otoh, more people should take credit cards!_

We should be moving away from credit cards. They are becoming an archaic technology.

<comment><USER5> What do you propose we replace them with?

<comment><USER6> <http://www.facecash.com>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hi gang, this is Mike from card.io.

socmoth, CrazedGeek, and tbgvi are right that this is considered a CNP transaction and rates are higher. However, our focus is on mobile developers, not retail merchants. By taking friction out of the mobile checkout flow for those developers (because customers don't have to type out their cc number), conversions are higher, and thus revenues are higher.

Regarding the user experience: folks are used to scanning barcodes with RedLaser, business cards with CardMunch, and checks with PayPal and the Chase mobile app. If we can make credit card purchasing easy and fast on the phone, that's a good user experience.

Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER3> CardMuch, Checks are both examples of me taking a picture of something I own (check, biz card) using my own cell phone. Card.io is someone else taking a picture of my credit card, using their cell phone. In the first two examples, I have control and ownership. In the last example, I have ownership (of the data/card) but no control of the software.

Anything that increases conversions is great! Best of luck! I look forward to seeing it in the wild. In fact, are there any merchants in SF I can watch use it yet?

<comment><USER8> I may be wrong, but I believe the premise behind card.io is that you buy something in an app (a good old in app purchase), and instead of typing in all your credit card info, you simply take a picture of your credit card for payment.

Doesn't seem that card.io is trying to get merchants to use this as a Square replacement at this point.

<comment><USER9> timjahn, you're right (I've seen it in action). Users will be scanning their own cards for purchases made on third party apps. It's really slick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. I was talking about this idea 2 weeks ago with some friends. Here in France Square doesn't work since only chip cards are accepted, not magnetic stripe cards. So card.io could have a greater market penetration worldwide than Square.

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks even smoother than Square, but I'm curious to see how it handles credit cards with the silvery ink worn off of the numbers, or cards with complex graphics on the front.

<comment><USER12> This is Josh, CTO of card.io. Those are definitely challenges, but we've put quite a lot of effort into handling exactly those sorts of problems, and we do pretty well with them (if I say so myself).

One interesting tidbit on this front, from someone who spends a lot of time admiring credit cards: Only some cards have silvery ink on top of the numbers. Some others have silvery plastic _underneath_ the main ink layer (usually part of the card's overall graphic design), so the numbers become more silvery with wear, not less. And yet others have no silver anywhere at all. TAANSTAFL. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks awesome. One thing I could see becoming an issue is in your best case scenario.

Say things are wildly successful and people come to expect that merchants will be taking a pic of your credit card with their phone. So you easily hand over your card to some random person to take a pic of it - assuming they are using Card.io.

However, what is to prevent nefarious people from just taking a pic with their own app or their own camera ?

So what would be good would be if there is some way to indicate (quickly) to the cardholder that the user is actually using Card.io to take the pic, rather than the Camera app - so they are not paranoid about people stealing their numbers.

Maybe turning the flash light red (is that even possible?) or something subtle that is a unique indicator that Card.io is being used and not some other app.

With Square, it is that little dongle - although I know that once Square gets big enough and the incentive gets large enough for people to create knock-offs of that dongle, I think it's much harder than say using a Camera.

Otherwise, awesome app.

<comment><USER14> > Say things are wildly successful and people come to expect that merchants > will be taking a pic of your credit card with their phone. So you easily > hand over your card to some random person to take a pic of it - <USER2> > they are using Card.io.

When you're sitting in a restaurant and hand over your credit card, the waiter is now in _total_ posssesion of it.

They could take a picture of it.

They could go to their laptop and make purchases from China.

They could run out the backdoor and never return it.

Handing over your credit card is a common enough thing, because you are protected from fraud by the credit card companies policies---not by your own regard for if the person you're giving your card is trust worthy or not.

<comment><USER13> That may be true, just saying....it could provide another avenue of fraud if the best case scenario does play itself out.

Not saying other avenues of fraud don't exist or cardholders aren't as vulnerable without it.

Just stating what I think will likely be a side-effect, that these guys should at least pay attention to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can you scan the back to get the CVV2 code? All the information you need from the front is embossed so you can read it on the back too.

</comment><comment><USER16> When I buy stuff online then I always make sure the browser's sending data over HTTPS (both on my mobile & desktop). I don't think I'd trust a 3rd party app to safely store and transmit my credit card data. Even non-technical people know to "look for the padlock". Have there been any usability studies to see if users are happy scanning their card from an app?

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks pretty cool, but wouldn't apple screw you? I don't think they'll like this, they want users to buy with the app store.

<comment><USER18> Thats true. I don't think anyone yet has thought about that. Nonetheless, it's a interesting idea. For me, I don't know if I'm comfortable with taking a picture of my card. But who knows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone aware of any direct competition in the credit card "scanning" space?

<comment><USER20> I mean, there's Square... but they use a hardware piece. I'm interested to understand why the hardware piece is better than the photo scanner. Is it more secure? More reliable?

<comment><USER21> I might be wrong, but I seem to recall that credit card companies charge less in fees for magnetic strip readings than just entering in the number, which the photo scanner would be analogous to.

<comment><USER22> No, you're right :) Swiping a card makes it a card present transaction, which have lower rates than keyed entry. Some processors will even shut you down if too many of your transactions are keyed (worried about fraud).

From what I can tell, this just does the scanning and doesn't actually process the transaction though? Could be wrong on that. Also, 15 cents per scan seems expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the same time it's possible that they cut deals with the processors to be certified in some way, so that if the numbers are retrieved using their service the card is considered present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a little unclear on this--does Card.io handle the payment processing too, or just the card capture itself? If they don't handle the payment processing, how does the card number get passed along?

<comment><USER7> Hi Kyle, we're just doing the card capture today. Many of our developers already had merchant accounts and were just looking to get rid of the pain of having their customers type in the card number. We scan the card and return the number via SSL to the developer who finalizes the transaction.

-Mike from card.io

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Constructive criticism: This is an example how how the illusion of a beautifully designed, professional-looking site is easily burst by an amateur how-to video.

<comment><USER7> Hi Pud, Mike from card.io here. I totally agree, and thanks for the criticism. This video goes up tomorrow, courtesy of @zumpangofilms: <http://youtu.be/7lg0nMH4NFk?hd=1>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How reliable is this? I can barely read my american co-founders credit card numbers on his card.

</comment><comment><USER26> Gaaahh! Shaky camera action!

<comment><USER7> Mike from card.io here. Sorry about that. Try this one: <http://youtu.be/7lg0nMH4NFk?hd=1></comment></comment>


Website offers bounty for iPhone 5S hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/22/tech/mobile/iphone-5s-hack-bounty/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 <comment><USER2> It's already been hacked (current 1st item on HN) [http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2013/ccc-breaks-apple- touchid](http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2013/ccc-breaks-apple-touchid)

<comment><USER3> The site also says "Maybe": [http://istouchidhackedyet.com/](http://istouchidhackedyet.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get why people are making such a big deal out of this. The iPhone lock screen is not intended to provide very strong security. I suspect the fingerprint scanner is more secure than the 4 digit PIN it's replacing for most users.

I've got a Thinkpad with a fingerprint scanner from 8 years ago. Works fine, but frankly it's easier to just type a password.

<comment><USER5> Probably to get across the message that biometrics are not a secure replacement/alternative to passwords, contrary to what most people think because they feel that no one else can "fake" their fingerprints.

<comment><USER6> Biometrics ARE a more secure replacement/alternative to passwords.

Are they perfect ? No. But nothing is.

<comment><USER7> I'd be very interested to hear how you think brute forcing my 22 character password is easier than stealing my laptop and fooling the fingerprint sensor.

<comment><USER8> Think of it in more relative terms. The average iPhone user isn't going to be using a 4 character PIN, let alone a 22 character one. While the approach taken by Apple has a number of very real drawbacks, upgrading from _no_ security to _good (but still hackable)_ security is a huge deal.

This isn't going to keep the NSA out of your phone, but it will serve to keep the average smash-n-grab thief or other low-skilled random out of your phone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why time is not running out - <AUTHOR> http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/why-time-is-not-running-out.htm <comment><USER2> The TLDR here is that the OP is a nihilist and all that really matters is your own happiness.

He ignores the fact that some of us aren't happy unless we are doing something that stands to make a double-digit percentage of humans on Earth happier, cleaner, safer, healthier, or more efficient.

We, the readership of HN, are privileged beyond imagination. For the most part, we are rich white educated American males. This affords us leverage in almost everything we do - some of us have actually achieved what I've described and it is not unreasonable for just about any of us to believe we can do the same...

...PROVIDED WE STOP WASTING TIME AND GET TO WORK.

<comment><USER3> You are under an illusion if you believe that you could improve life of humans on earth by a double-digit percentage.

I cannot think of a single product/thing/whatever that accomplished the goal you mentioned.

The "dent in the universe" bullshit is such hypocritical thinking that it makes me sick.

<comment><USER4> Google and Facebook. Like it or not those two are already in the double-digit percentage.

<comment><USER3> And they do exactly what? Cleaner? No. More productive? In which terms? Safer? Nope. Happier? I have my doubts that people were less happy before Google + FB were invented.

<comment><USER2> Facebook has made hiring safer. And probably dating, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only way I can put my mind at ease is to realize that when I die I'll be no more human than dolphin, dust mite, seashell, moon rock, or electron. In an abstract sense my contributions to humanity mean nothing. So it makes little sense to fret about my impact on humanity, and in addition I do not strive to "live on" in the minds of humans (whatever that means) or any other beings.

If you buy this philosophy then the importance of time vanishes and there is no need to pretend that you have all the time in the universe. Choosing to waste time is not objectively worse (though it may be boring) and on these grounds I agree with the author.

However by the author's same reasoning it is not important to be happy either. After you have died it will not matter how you felt while you were alive. So to me the conclusion is silly.

But I nevertheless enjoyed the article. I do ponder my own life from time to time and I like reading about how other people deal with the finiteness, or rather infinitesimal-ness- of it all -- just the idea terrifies me. (So does the idea of living forever -- a pretty unfortunate Catch-22.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You misinterpret my conclusion. It's important to be happy because psychologically (because of the way our brain is wired and evolved over thousands of years), we _must_ seek happiness. Even if it doesn't matter after you die, why would you want to live an unhappy life? However, the same conclusion doesn't apply to spending time on "worthwhile" activities. Evolution _per se_ doesn't care if we strive to write a new compiler, go to professional conferences or work hard at a bank earning millions. All it cares about (apart from our reproduction) is our happiness.

Apparently, happiness is also linked to reproduction and many "worthwhile" activities are ultimately linked to happiness. But I'm digressing here... Brain seeks happiness and in absence creates discomfort that is by definition undesirable and that is why (so obviously) it is important to be happy even if "nothing really matters" ultimately.

<comment><USER6> > All it cares about (apart from our reproduction) is our happiness.

This isn't quite true. All evolution cares about is reproduction, that's literally it. It only tangentially cares about happiness/earning millions/whatever if it improves reproductive ability (which they probably do).

<comment><USER7> This also isn't quite true. Evolution cares about nothing. Evolution just happens.

<comment><USER8> In these discussions, just translate "cares about" as "is affected by" or "consists of".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> But time is running out! Unless we find a way to effectively create energy, or we find a way to upload onto a reversible computing substrate, or Dust Theory is real, or we learn how to do alpha-point/line computing, or something else that fixes the problem, our light cone of the universe is not going to be habitable for that much longer and every planck time step counts. While I can't speak for anyone else who wants to live well past 100 years, indeed well past a billion if physics permits it, at least for me it's quite the disturbing conclusion to believe "time isn't running out, just be happy and focus on the present mon!"

I reject the notion that "being happy" is a binary thing or some plateau of state of mind one achieves for some duration, though I think the concept of happiness as a fuzzy cluster of feelings that make one say "I feel happy" is a useful simplification. There are many forms of happiness of many durations, some quite complex and dependent on many variables or past states of mind. The chemical soup in a happy brain has many possible configurations. Even when I feel super-happy I still wonder if perhaps there's a higher form of happiness I could achieve, and then I wonder what sorts of happiness I'd experience with a different mind design (which is why I won't wirehead indefinitely even though wireheading would give all possible forms of human happiness).

To me this post really comes across not as championing "happiness is what matters", but rather the more depressing "be content with your lot in life." No sah! That's for religious folk and for people who just crossed Atheist River but haven't finished questioning all their religious indoctrination! A better message I think is simply "If you aren't feeling the way you want to feel, change something. You don't have to feel that way you know, even if changing is really hard and takes years." But that's not really profound...

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right we have to distinguish what happiness is and it may be different for different people. The rush one gets during a party may not be happiness. While boredom for some may be happiness. Profound or simple, what I aimed to talk about is the anxiety associated with time and our interpretation of it. It doesn't mean you have to settle in life, all it means is that don't kill yourself with anxiety if you fail to make changes. I'm _not_ arguing for inaction, rather I'm arguing for not (unnecessarily and habitually) fretting about results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I doubt he can be a nihilist if he in turn values his own happiness (after all if nothing matters than why should it matter if I am happy or not). His philosophy seems more egoistic:

"it makes absolutely no difference to what you are doing as long as it makes you happy (ideally, while staying within the bounds of morality and not impinging on others)."

Which is not to say that it's bad, but it's not nihilism -- there is a belief there, it's what makes me happy has value. Which is fine, but simplistic. There are different types of happiness, happiness from immediate gratification and happiness from long-term goal reaching (ex. learning to play the piano).

If you try to make yourself happy all the time, I think you'll find yourself seeking (or reaching) immediate gratification too often, when the long-term goals are hard, difficult, but worthy of your effort. I started running the past year, and incrementally it's difficult, uncomfortable, and painful (especially at 7:00 AM at 30 F) -- but I feel so much better and consequently happier then I did a year ago.

My point is to not ignore the fact that time is running out, but to absorb the point, come to terms with it, and act with it (sort of mental Judo if you will). I prefer to understand that my time-span is limited, to accept the reality of that, and let it influence my judgment.

Not in that I'm adjusting my will everyday, or worrying endlessly about the issue. However, I do make important decisions with the knowledge that my life could end tomorrow, or the next day, or next year - and how would I feel about that decision given that context.

</comment><comment><USER11> So, I'm starting to read this and I'm thinking he's making some good points. My inner monologue goes "Maybe 35 isn't too late to reassess and turn things around?" Then I read:

"I'd have nagging thoughts such as these: 'Oh god, I'm 25 and I haven't..."

f u c k . . . .

<comment><USER12> Hah - same feeling here. I couldn't tell if that line was poking fun at how young that is for worrying about that sort of thing or not.

Just in case it is _not_ a joke, I hope we all agree 25 is no where near any "I have no time for any more life experiences!!!" point...

<comment><USER13> I remember when I was 14 and cried myself to sleep since I was in a panic about what to do in life, I realised I had so many options from going into mathematics, medicine, engineering or music but probably never being able to be great in more than one at a time. I felt I had to choose.

I'm 35 now and I still get that feeling sometime, but I have changed focus in my career often enough to know that you can have small successes and appreciate them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Similar article : [http://rahulbijlani.com/essays/you-are-not-running-out-of- ti...](http://rahulbijlani.com/essays/you-are-not-running-out-of-time-essay/)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2778342>

</comment><comment><USER15> There is a quote I like:

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

</comment><comment><USER16> Time spent fretting about time is time misspent. Stop misspending your time worrying about misspending your time so that you can stop misspending your time and

start living.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a guy at 32 I realized that there's not enough time to read crappy books. So I've since started reading only stuff that makes me understand the world around me a little more, step by step, either by reading a Philip K. Dick Novel or going through Locke's "Treatises of Government". I've discovered that trying to making more and more sense of the world around you gives you a sense of fulfillment.

<comment><USER13> I have kind of cut down on reading fiction for that reason. The problem is that I seem to engage with factual material in shorter and more ad-hoc forms (e.g. while researching something) than reading entire books. A good balance for me would be fiction with a strong factual background. I'm looking out for recommendations of books of authors that does exactly this. In other words, recreational reading that accidentally expose me to useful facts and concepts.

<comment><USER18> I would be wary of cutting out too much fiction as some great minds put down their thoughts and ideas through fiction. e.g. Hemmingway, Orwell or Steinbeck - there are probably many others. But yes be selective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That "list of things I'd want to do by the time I turn 30" list is so utterly cringe-worthy.

Go to the moon? Reduce India's poverty by at least 10%? Really?

<comment><USER13> I always thought my goal should be to become a millionaire by the time I am 30. Failing that, put money away in a pension plan in a serious way.

Then 30 happened and I was a millionaire, in the currency I grew up with and that wasn't worth much (average annual senior tech salary in a 1st world city). Expectations change, as well as the understanding of money, inflation, etc. Most importantly, that it's cheaper to hedge your bets earlier rather than later.

<comment><USER20> It could be worse :) you reached your goal ! Now the goalposts have moved.

For comparison, I'm 31, and my net worth is about 10.000 dollars :P . I definitely made a lot of suboptimal decisions along the way, but I think I'm finally on my way up.

While I'm a nonbeliever (no afterlife for me), I think that the blog post misses the "experienced happiness vs remembered happiness" point that people like Kahnemann and others have talked about:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html)

[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-good- life/201010/exp...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-good- life/201010/experienced-happiness-and-remembered-happiness-having-it-both- ways)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I suggest people in their twentysomething should read this book: "The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now" - [http://www.amazon.com/Defining-Decade-Your-Twenties- Matter/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Defining-Decade-Your-Twenties- Matter/dp/0446561762)

</comment><comment><USER22> TL;DR

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the summary: if the passage of time makes you anxious that you aren't doing enough in life, consider that no matter what you do, there will always be more to do and possibly many other better and interesting things to do. So, relax and choose to be happy irrespective and in spite of what you are doing right now.</comment></comment>